Thin Thinking – Sunday, February 23, 1947
The phrase “defense in depth” has often been used as descriptive of a broad and flexible system of multiple strength, as contrasted with a thin and rigid line of fortification.- There is another source of multiple strength that is a safeguard to any nation or people that has it, and that is “thinking in depth.” Few if any great discoveries and few if any great developments come solely through the efforts of any one man—even though history sometimes accredits them to one man. And in the urgency of war, many minds moving toward a common purpose accomplished what would seem to have been the scientifically impossible. Neither one mind, nor a few minds, nor many regimented minds could have done so much.
Whenever and wherever one person or a relatively small group of people attempt to do the thinking for all others, or attempt to tell everyone else what to do, the creative and productive processes are retarded. And this can only go on so long until peoples and nations become impoverished—impoverished as to leadership as well as to material things; for even as the physical efforts of many men accomplish much more than the physical efforts of any one man, so the mental efforts of many men, exercised in freedom and toward constructive purposes, accomplish more than the mental efforts of any one man, or any small group of men.
History fails to record that any nation has ever shown good prospects of providing abundance and happiness for all who were willing to work, when only a few were doing the thinking, or when only a few were making the decisions. There is no monopoly on brains, and the more we can be induced to think for ourselves, and the more freedom we have for the constructive use of our thoughts, the safer is the world for the things that are worth preserving, and the stronger and richer and happier will be our lives in the glorious land we live in, and the better able shall we be to cope with any undermining influence from within or without. Indeed, without broad strength on the mental and moral and spiritual levels, physical defenses have always ultimately proved to be inadequate.
“The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station K S L and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, February 23, 1947. 11:30 a.m. to 12.00 noon, EST. Copyright 1947.
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February 23, 1947
Broadcast Number 0,914